


born on the  bayou

by bleakmidwinter



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, Hot Springs, I am sorry that I am a slut for canon, Knights of the Round Table hijinks, Light angst but also you know the ending of the film so, M/M, Sexual Content, Snapshots, Tristan has a kink for Galahad being a virgin, horse riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28870458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleakmidwinter/pseuds/bleakmidwinter
Summary: Over the years, Galahad and Tristan learn to care for one another.
Relationships: Galahad/Tristan (King Arthur 2004)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 88





	born on the  bayou

Iseult hatches from her egg the first week Galahad is taken in by his brothers. Her name is not bestowed until the sticky bits of shell fall from her shockingly fluffy body. 

The first impression Galahad gains of Tristan is that he is soft-hearted, and perhaps foolish, to be spending an inordinate amount of time tending to a nest found on one of their patrols, mutilated by the harsh winds of Brittania. 

There is a feeling of unease that comes when Galahad joins Tristan on for his first patrol run and is forced to wait as he diverts from their designated path to tend to his birds. One at a time, over the course of two weeks, the fledglings ascend to the afterlife, the mother presumably abandoning them after the wreckage from the recent storm.

Iseult remains, even when a day of Tristan’s feeding is forced to be skipped. She is more than resilient; she is determined. If she is eager for Tristan’s company, Galahad cannot find it within himself to fathom why. 

Tristan had been the only one not to extend any verbal greeting toward Galahad when he’d joined their ranks. At first, he had assumed it was because they had an established brotherhood, one not easily broken into, but while Tristan might not have been verbal, he  _ had  _ thrown an arm around his shoulders and topped off his drink with an odd blend of bourbon from his personal stash of booze. 

Thinking Tristan tender and benign is a mistake. 

A harsh run-in with the Woads during the blinding cold blue of morning knocks Galahad clean off his horse. Inexperience tingles within his newly bruised bones, and he watches Tristan from the frozen forest floor as he loads several arrows in his bow in under fifteen seconds, taking out three Woads. An arrow flies directly into the eye of one, and another’s arm is stapled by an arrowhead to bark as a second flies fast into his temple. 

Tristan’s expression remains unwavering the entire battle. Galahad had barely lasted two minutes before he’d been knocked down, and watched the bloodshed with horror in his eyes. That’s when Arthur assigns Tristan to be his personal trainer. 

The men train together, but there is only so much they can group-teach Galahad. Arthur believes it is important for their new greenhorn to expand his horizons when it comes to absorbing the knowledge of their ways. Apparently, Tristan has honed methods and strategies more acutely crafted than his new brothers, when it comes to refining one’s skills as a warrior. 

They are camped for a week on Roman soil, far from the Woads, and for long enough that Tristan decides one chilled night to begin their new training regime. He breaks into Galahad’s tent when the dark becomes the blackest it can be, and he gruffly says, “Rise and shine, pup.” 

“It’s late, Tristan,” Galahad responds saucily. “The whole camp is sacked out.” 

“I hadn’t noticed,” he deadpans, arms crossed. Galahad wonders if sarcasm is something that strikes Tristan more often than he can read. 

Unwilling to enrage the older man, Galahad escapes the cold comfort of his raggy blankets and moves to grab a satchel, but Tristan grabs his arm first, abruptly close, and whispers, “You will not bring belongings of any kind.” 

Galahad then wonders where it is they’re going, late at night without a torch to guide them. Nor a weapon. He doesn’t question the command, follows as he’s told. He is so young and fresh-faced in this cause that he has not yet formulated a face of resistance, or a defense system of sorts. He is overly trusting of his brothers, depending on them to feed and guide him. 

Tristan crosses the dimly lit camp to the breadth where their horses are tied. He leads over his grey speckled horse, clipping her hooves along the frozen soil. Galahad nearly shivers out of his skin, grateful that the air is not bitter with winter, but with autumn breeze. 

“I want to see you ride,” Tristan tells him plainly, handing him the reins. Galahad takes them in a firm grasp, steadier than how he feels inside, and looks at Tristan as if he were mad. 

“At this hour? I’d wake the dead!” 

“Then wake them.”

Tristan doesn’t help him up atop his horse. It takes a ludicrously embarrassing few minutes to mount her. Like Tristan, the horse has strong muscles, broad and dangerous. Galahad can’t help but make the comparison, feeling as if he’s grappling with a force untouchable.

Without warning, when Galahad is settled, Tristan hops up behind him. His broad chest pressed tight behind a tied off tunic pushes up insistently against his back as beefy thighs encase his hips. 

“Your scrutiny knows no bounds, Tristan,” Galahad seethes, embarrassed to be watched this closely, like a child. He ignores the pounding in his chest that is signaling for him to feel otherwise.

“Don’t allow your legs to hang loose like that.” Tristan ignores his statement, patting Galahad’s exposed thigh just below his skirt. “You won’t hurt the creature. Treat her as your balance.”

Galahad’s muscles tense around the horse’s back, and his fingers curl tighter around the reins as the horse begins to move. For once, he’s holding his weight in his core, and he doesn’t feel as if he’ll topple to the ground. 

“How’s that?” he asks, breathless with the taxing effort of holding this new position. Tristan’s hands find both of his thighs and he curls his hands under the skin there, sending shockwaves up Galahad’s spine. 

“Up further, and you’ll be righted,” Tristan murmurs. Galahad bends his knees, and represses a shiver he could have easily blamed on the cool breeze. “There you are.”   


The horse trots further from their tents, and Galahad loses himself in the ride, making sure his posture is as rigid as the straining tendons in his legs. He feels like a bow and arrow, ready to catapult and cut through air. He startles when Tristan presses one of his calloused hands on his stomach. He slips under the tunic easily despite the several layers of fabric, and his cold fingertips on Galahad’s warm skin burn like a hot rod.

“You’re far too tense here. Working on your core muscles doesn’t mean keeping yourself locked up as tight as a mule in labor,” Tristan tells him, only a slim edge of humor to the words. 

“And how exactly do I prevent that?” Galahad grouses. 

“Not for tonight, pup. I have other plans for you.”

The way Tristan speaks occasionally riles Galahad in a way he is never prepared for. There is a twisting feeling in his stomach from the tone of his voice, and an urge to lash out, but not necessarily in anger. However, Galahad is beginning to know rage and irritation like the back of his hand, and it is the only way he knows how to formulate a response when he feels as such. 

“Oh joy,” he mutters. 

They slowly trek from the camp in earnest, entering the dark shadows of the woods. The forest is not so tightly weaved that there isn’t space for a horse to wind its way through the trees and brush. Even if there is little light, Galahad’s eyes have adjusted well-enough to lead the way. 

“How far do we go?” he asks when Tristan doesn’t tell him to turn back.

Tristan kicks the horses behind lightly and she stops, emitting a huff of displeasure. He takes a dagger from his belt and stabs it in the tree closest to them. Bark falls from the dent. 

“Farther than this,” Tristan responds. Galahad knows when there is little to be drawn out of the other man. He is a man of few words, and poor diction.

It feels like an hour they trot. The horse stops to chew up some dead grass, and Galahad resists sinking his weight against Tristan’s heat. As they travel along, the sky melds into more of a light grey than a cavernous black. When the heat of Tristan’s breath vanishes from his nape, Galahad surmises he is watching the stars. 

He gains the strangest sentiment as they continue on, that he’s pleased Tristan woke him so they could have this journey together. In the night, alone. Quiet. 

It is the first time since being torn from the arms of his loving family he has not yearned to be back home. For several moments, he feels that way, until Tristan kicks the rear of his horse once more and she comes skidding to a halt with an offended neigh. 

“Off,” Tristan grumbles in his ear. Galahad obeys, as he’s been obeying for the past couple hours. However long they’ve spent cruising through the woods. 

The ground is hard beneath his feet. The loss of Tristan’s body heat is harrowing. 

“Do you know where we are?” he asks, staring down at Galahad with eyes drawn to slits, beady and unforgiving in bleakness of the forest. Galahad frowns, crossing his arms for warmth. 

“How could I? We weren’t following any sort of path.” 

“You’re a quick learner, if not a callow one,” Tristan notes. Galahad bristles with several remarks on the tip of his tongue, unable to speak his mind before Tristan continues, “What do you believe I have brought us here for?” 

Galahad is back to being baffled. 

“I did not question it. I believed you would tell me.” 

“Learn to question,” Tristan suggests, “even your brothers.” 

The raw understanding of what is going on here sinks sorely into Galahad’s chest and his eyes go round with shock. For a stifling moment of desperation, all he can think about is how glad he is he brought his boots and not just his socks with moth holes. 

“Find your way back on your own,” Tristan orders him, tone as sharp as his teeth. “Or freeze and prove your worth to be as barren as your prowess.” 

With a kick to the opposite side of his horse’s rear, she pushes up on her two hind feet and neighs boorishly, before swerving and zigzagging through the trees. Galahad stumbles a few steps forward, as if to move after Tristan and his steed, but it is far too late. 

The galloping fades into the foggy, insect-buzzing distance, and Galahad is left isolated in unfamiliar woods. Stuck surrounded by frozen air and surroundings that grow identical the longer he stares. 

For a while, he feels nothing save for the chilling bite of the encroaching winter on his arms. He follows the horses hoof-prints in the dirt for as long as he can, until the ground is frozen enough not to leave a mark. It is likely Tristan brought his horse down new paths, to trick Galahad. 

Dawn comes gradually, when light begins to trickle in from above, and the forest grows a warmer and more vibrant color. It is then Galahad begins to spiral with indignation. It is a mania not easily cured by shouting or snapping twigs, but to picture the manner in which he could end Tristan’s life. 

Strength, he could build up, until he’s capable enough to slide hands over the man’s throat and squeeze. Oh, how he could tear the braids from his scalp with his teeth and watch him bleed.

Rage dissipates, as time passes, and the way home has not yet found him. Fear settles into its place like an old acquaintance, and mourning, over the fact he will never again experience comfort and shelter. That he will never see his real brothers, sisters. His mother and father. The Woads are not near, but how he wishes they would scoop him up and flay him alive. 

For at least then, he would be worth something to someone. 

Daylight begins to succumb to dusk’s horrid hues, purple and navy blues darkening the sky, the only warning a cold front will wash over him for several more hours.

Galahad looks within himself and finds only hatred, for his weakness, and for his fate. The idea he should survive as long as he can manage in these woods rather than continue looking for camp does not strike him until midnight, until he is so cold he feels as if his toes will become the color of the murky soil beneath them. 

He stops walking, analyzes the trees that he could have sworn he passed hours prior, and he looks around instead of spiraling for any signs of a nearby cave. In the dark of night, it is a difficult search, but a much simpler one than finding his way home. 

Though he feels he is bringing himself off course, he finds a cave a mile or so from the trail he’d been following. When he enters, a wall of warm mist greets him. It is far too fortunate, that he had found a cave with a hot spring, and though it costs him a scrape on the leg as he squeezes through the tight rocky corridors, it is nothing short of relief for aqua water, bright and welcoming to come into view. His nearly frostbitten skin tingles from the sight. 

“I was beginning to think you’d circle the same path for days,” a familiar voice sounds from the corner of the expansive pool. Galahad bares his teeth, and meets Tristan’s eyes. The man is nude, resting against an exclave in the gravelly walls of the spring. There is a provocative grin on his face, toothy and cruel. Galahad very nearly jumps in the water fully-clothed just to reach him and pull him under the water. 

To drown in a hot spring may be too favorable of an end, however. 

“You’ve passed your first test,” Tristan announces, raising a leg in the water and toes the surface. It strikes Galahad that he is a fairly reserved man, and that baring his flesh in such a manner may be more cogent of an action than he first registered. 

“Have I?” he asks, coldly. 

“Survive, independently.” 

“Is that what this was all about?” Galahad barks out. “If I could figure out that the only way out was to find a way to not curl up and die? Were you watching all the time?” 

“I was throwing you off track with every step of your journey,” Tristan confirms. “Keeping you lost so you could force yourself to learn the ways of a knight. It is a lonely path, pup. The better you know now than find out when you’re older. It would be a much harsher reality then.” 

Galahad grits his teeth, trembling with unspent anger. 

There are thousands of reasons he should be beating Tristan’s head into the rock, swinging fists like a madman, but there is also the reality that this life of the unwilling mercenary is his own life now. There will be no adjustment, if he does not submit to the brutal ways of his new brothers.

One day, he will return to Brittania, and this will be as blurry as a dream. 

Or a nightmare.

“You look as if you’re going to shed a tear,” Tristan snarks. “You may join me. The tests are over for now, I swear to you. Give rest to your sore body.” 

“Where’s your horse?” Galahad asks in a low voice. 

“With Iseult. I will call to her when it is time to leave.” 

Galahad toes his boots off, relieved to see his feet are only a light red, nowhere near the deadly blue-purple shade he imagined them to be. It feels like fire when he tips a toe into the water. 

“That’s it, boy,” Tristan murmurs, slipping his eyes shut and sinking further into the water. He lies against the edge of the hot spring as Galahad strips quickly, eager to sink his whole body into liquid flame. He groans when he does, satisfaction rippling through him like a tempting drug. 

“Don’t presume I’ll be your friend,” Galahad informs him, wading closer, but keeping a deliberate distance. He sinks deeper until the surface tickles his red-cold nose. 

Tristan snorts and responds, “Don’t presume I want a friend, let alone you as one.” 

The remark stings worse than the initial impact of the water, and Galahad barely suppresses the urge to splash water heatedly in his direction, but he is more than starkly aware how childish that action would look.

Galahad closes his eyes too, when he’s found a smooth enough surface to sit upon. It is a gentle night, spent in wet warmth, like being wrapped in a blanket with the advantage of floating, light-headed and loose. 

Cracking an eye open, he turns to see Tristan either asleep or in a very deep state of rest. He is barely breathing, arms crossed under the water and scarcely rising with the rhythm of his lungs. 

Galahad’s eyes travel over his body, and wonders how many others earned the opportunity to view him in this state, vulnerable by definition, but still a muscled beast. Thick arms and legs that speak of monstrous acts, and threaten without so much of a gesticulation. 

It may be the warmth of the water, but Galahad believes it would feel magnificent to battle him, be held to the ground by strong arms, and discover an innovative way to squirm out of his robust hold. Could Tristan be tamed, or has he spent too many nights in the timberlands?

* * *

Years into Galahad’s enlistment finds him hardened by countless battles with Woads and horribly cold and lonely nights in desolate fields with only the warmth of a brother or two to keep him from having immune system failure or getting bitten by the winter’s snake-bite. 

In the summer, Galahad can more easily wear skirts to show off the way his thighs have been carved into stone, from the putty they used to be in his youth. 

Being mocked by his brothers for the show of skin does not deter him from wearing the article, and flexing the muscles in his legs as he no longer needs a rein on his horse. He can straddle her and shoot an arrow through a Woad’s head all in one pass. Tristan hadn’t shown his pride the first time he’d done it, but had ruffled his hair one night outside Rome. It had been after a long battle, brothers gathered and drunk around the fire, and Tristan smelling of rum and earth had strung his long fingers through Galahad’s ever-snarled swath of curls, rubbing his scalp and scratching an itch Galahad hadn’t even known he’d been harboring. 

All too soon, Tristan’s praise was lost for him. 

The man was never much for sentiment, verbal or otherwise. The most he’d get out of his earlier lessons was a “good” or a “better” but nothing so profound as an embrace or a kiss on the forehead like Bors would do for Lancelot or Gawain. 

Galahad is ever the child of the group, unable to initiate grand gestures himself in order to be reciprocated in kind, though he craves Tristan’s praise as if it were a tangible thing. He’s never thought deeply on why this is, perhaps understanding at heart it is due to the attachment to him he grew as a boy, trained day in and day out by this man, knowing him more intimately than any of the other knights. 

It is a hot night, the night they settle down on the grasslands just beyond Rome’s great wall. Another day, and they’ll be back home, in the comfort of golden-lined curtains and mattresses. Tristan will pretend to relish the luxuries, but will go back into the woods in search of something he’s never found, looking forever for some paganistic purpose, Galahad imagines. 

The man had spent so much of his youth living with himself, lost in the brush, in caves. He does not understand what it means to have a family to go back to, or a bed to call home. 

“Will you ever take in a wife?” Gawain asks Tristan, as they light a fire between them. Arthur stays in his tent, brooding the past and their present as he always does. It is nearly always a surprise if he wanders out of his tent and settles down with them for small conversation. 

Galahad looks up from the morsel of meat he is cooking on a stick, and finds Tristan’s expression to be choleric. Ever incensed by questions about his personal life, which is why Galahad imagines Tristan takes a liking to him; Galahad never bothers to ask. 

Even if he wonders. 

“Will you?” Tristan shoots back and Gawain roars in laughter, exchanging a glance with Bors. 

“Come now, Tristan. We’ve been to several taverns and settlements in only the last few months, and you’ve not so much as glanced at a skirt,” Bors accuses, taking a large bite of underdone meat. It doesn’t seem to bother him, and he guzzles it down with cheap alcohol.

“Perhaps he’s had his fill of skirts, all those years training the young pup,” Gawain suggests, and Galahad perks up, ears turning red at their points. 

“You’re not clever, Gawain,” he shoots back, fuming, and turns to Tristan to try and garner some support, but his breath gets caught in his throat. Tristan is smiling, staring straight at the fire with the gentlest of expressions, as if he’s dreaming about a beautiful fantasy. He’s never seen Tristan smile like that, not once in all the years he’s known him. 

Galahad turns back to his brothers, losing his gall when he adds, “Perhaps if you’d stick to your own business, Tristan wouldn’t feel pressured to share, and thus compelled to.”   


“Don’t speak for me, pup,” Tristan warns him, tenderly voiced. In any other predicament, he would have spoken cruelly, but his talons of disapproval are absent tonight. 

“I’m sticking up for you, you sod,” Galahad grumbles, kicking a stick into the fire. 

“With the way females hang on you, Galahad, you’ll marry soon enough,” Bors claims, “I could have sworn I’d seen three women hanging on just one arm, last trip to a tavern.” 

“I could have three women and still not end up with as many offspring as you, Bors,” Galahad shoots back, in jest. Agitation is still rung throughout his body, an unwelcome tension. He can feel Tristan’s calm presence beside him far more potently than average.

“He’s right,” Gawain says to Bors, then turns to the fire with an impish grin, “But, I’m sure you’ll make a fine housewife one day, Gal. Bear quite enough children.” 

Galahad sees red, throwing his portion of food to the ground, hackles raised as he stands. “If this is you attempting to pick a fight, I will have no problem delivering, you rotten — ”

“Galahad,” Tristan says, the warning more authentic this time. “You must learn not to take everything they say to you to heart, or you’ll have a black eye for the true battles.” 

“Are you saying they’d beat me? You said yourself I’ve honed my skills as an archer,” Galahad snaps, swerving to meet his brother’s irritatingly smug expressions. “We’ll see if they can dodge as easy as they bark.” 

“I’d accept the challenge if I thought you had a chance,” Lancelot mumbles, half asleep on his back. They’d almost forgotten he was here. 

The group laughs and Galahad lets out a gruff noise of defeat, trampling off towards his tent to avoid further debacle. He expects to be simmering with the company of his irritation the whole night long, and is surprised when a half hour later the noises from the fire begin to dwindle, and Tristan curls one of the flaps at the entrance of his tent back. 

“What is it?” 

“My tent has fallen apart,” Tristan explains, tying the flaps of the tent together after he enters. “I would rather not spend hours in the heat searching for a replacement peg.”

Tristan has invited himself to stay, laying down beside Galahad without preamble, atop the sheets he’d laid out to cover nearly the entirety of the ground floor. Galahad gawks, and mutters, “Only you would rather freeze to death than swelter. In winter, you slept in the woods when you lost your tent years back.” 

“I always know how to find a hot spring, or a deep enough cave,” Tristan reminds, removing his tunic so all that remains is an undershirt, neck a low enough ‘v’ for Galahad to see his chest hair. 

“So I remember.” 

Galahad turns on his side, facing away from Tristan, and endeavors to find comfort. 

The soil is soft, damp and loose due to the heat wave arising from the south, but he’d lost his pillow on their last trip into the mountains. Tristan makes a rough, hoarse sound, rousing him from his near-sleep. He is just about to chew him out when a folded piece of cloth is being placed under his head. Tristan had folded his tunic. “I could add my top,” he tells him in a low voice, but Galahad shakes his head, blush rising quickly to his cheeks. 

He shifts, and finds the tunic is thick enough to bring him the needed comfort. Perhaps his back won’t ache when he wakes. One can hope. 

Sleep comes soon after, and when he wakes in the night it is not because of discomfort, but because he has grown hard. Though he is surrounded by the musky scent of the man beside him, he assumes it must have been the pressure on his cock in the night, perhaps due to some restless night terrors he doesn’t remember. Tristan is asleep beside him on his back, face craned away. 

Galahad doesn’t think before he reaches under the sheet and fists himself, rucking the material of his skirt up to reach it. He starts slow, not wanting to wake Tristan with the noise, or his own noises that soon enough he’ll be drawing out of himself. A subtle build won’t overwhelm him. 

It is dawn; early light seeps in from the cracks of the tent. 

His breath is growing harsher, and his cock wetter as he strokes himself. Gradually, the strokes increase enough to make a slick sound with every downturn, but he’s so close to his release he doesn’t mind. He nearly shouts when he feels a hand on his member that isn’t his own. 

To his horror, he turns to find Tristan wide awake. 

His expression is masked with long hair and braids, eyes barely visible beneath his bangs. Galahad’s erection has flagged, out of humiliation, and because Tristan’s hand around the base is tight enough to snap the genital off, like he’s seen him do to the limbs of Woads. 

“Did you not spend enough time between a woman’s legs on our last trip?” Tristan asks evenly, fist unrelenting even as Galahad discreetly tries to pry his fingers off. The remark is a scathing one, even without inflection. 

Galahad’s lips draw into a tight line, expression furrowed. 

He doesn’t know what comes over him that encourages him to spill the truth.

“I’ve never been with a woman, tavern maid or otherwise.” 

He’s kissed quite a few ladies. They are great company, and it isn’t as if he hasn’t wanted to try it, see what it’s like, releasing the tension from years worth of bloody and ferocious fighting, but a woman has never invited him to her chambers, and he finds he’s far more shy than the average man. He could snap the neck of a Woad and not think twice, but he could never bring himself to slide a hand up in between the legs of a female, even if they flaunt themselves in a manner that suggests they wouldn’t mind if he did. 

Tristan stares at him, then in a swift movement, burrows his way underneath the sheets to angle Galahad’s cock into his mouth. 

The bursting pleasure of wet warmth and tight suction shocks out of him a choked groan. “Hush, or this ends,” Tristan murmurs against the shaft, and Galahad bites his tongue as he bobs down. 

Ramifications of this act do not cross Galahad’s mind, nor does he wonder of his fellow warrior’s affections for him, if this is merely another way to teach him something new or not. 

He focuses on the way the head of his cock slips wetly between Tristan’s lips, how the man’s sharp teeth graze lightly against the bulging veins, and how hard it is to refrain from moaning while he sucks and pulls his lips entrancingly up and down his erection.

It is because his experience is as lacking as a nun’s no doubt, but in seconds he’s close to breaking apart. He reaches down and curls a hand through the hair he finds. He tugs but Tristan sucks harder. He arches, gasping and breathing loud and heavy as he comes. 

It rushes through him, and he convulses with the strength of it.

Tristan bites his thigh after he swallows and works himself to release under the thin sheet. There isn’t a noise made beside a hiss of breath when he spends on the ragged blanket and then he’s crawling up and into the light. His lips are red and glossy and Galahad is sure his own face isn’t better off, flushed and slack with pleasure. 

Tristan tilts his head, running a hand up Galahad's smooth chest.

“Sex suits you,” he decides, collapsing on his side next to him.

He shuts his eyes, and Galahad lies there, struggling to come down after experiencing the most intense orgasm of his entire life. Using Tristan’s mouth, copulating with a man. It is as overwhelming as it is unsurprising. He supposes this is a long time coming, but knowing this fact doesn’t make it easier to sink back into his slumber. 

When breakfast arrives in the form of soup made by Lancelot’s deft hands, Galahad sits in the circle they form outside and spoons the steaming liquid into his mouth diligently. Yet, he cannot keep his eyes from wandering to Tristan.

Back in his full gear, he looks immaculate. 

Like nothing has ever touched or will ever touch him, and for a moment Galahad wonders if he should forget what transpired as if it had never happened, but Tristan meets his eyes halfway through their meal. Conversation surrounds them, deafening as their brothers guffaw and roar. 

Tristan smirks and winks, and Galahad’s heart falls into his stomach. 

Bastardly. Horrid. In need of a good fight. 

Galahad scrapes his spoon against the sides of his wooden bowl and promises himself he’ll tackle Tristan and force him to surrender the next time they find themselves in a training tournament. If he gets a black eye out of it, so be it. 

* * *

Another training tournament doesn’t come. They grow distracted with larger, more devastating battles. Unnecessary are the softer days when the brothers would hold each other close in winter, and the times when they would teach one another new tricks for the war, for their mission. Just one day more like those to make this neverending bloodbath a wee bit simpler, is all Galahad wishes. 

Iseult follows them, soaring in the sky as they reach Rome and learn that there will be one more mission served on their plate before their freedom is rewarded. 

It bothers Galahad that Tristan is the only one refusing to tether himself to the promise of exemption. He barely raises his voice when Arthur decides for them this is the path they will take, and he seems practically amused by Galahad’s temper.

At first, Galahad bitterly wishes him the company of nothing more but himself and his bird, but upon hearing from Bors that Tristan means to continue fighting alongside Arthur far beyond the end of their commission, his rage boils over, and he finds himself in Tristan’s quarters the night before they are to depart north of Hadrian’s Wall. 

It is rare that Tristan is resting in a bedroom instead of the woods, and Galahad is glad for it when he blusters forward into his chambers, remarks at the ready. 

“Do you have a death wish, or do you truly believe your own rhetoric about the lonesome path of a warrior? Don’t you believe there is a life you could find outside of this bloody cage?” 

Tristan is sitting on the edge of the mattress, removing his boots.

The room doesn’t match his sensibilities. Far too golden, far too rich. The only part of this room that screams his name is the open window, cold breeze wafting through, oak wood windowsill big enough for a large hawk to rest its feathers. Iseult must be taking a detour. 

“There is no life for me that would satiate my needs,” Tristan admits easily, rubbing at the soles of his feet, sore from the long travel. 

“How do you know unless you try?” Galahad debates, waving his arms toward the window. “All you need is your bird to guide you, is that it?”   


“You make it your business to declare your distaste for this life on the daily. I don’t see how my  _ taste  _ for it should bother you so, especially when I don’t rub it in the face of others like a spoilt child.” 

Galahad sucks in a breath and crosses his arms. 

“Perhaps because I know you’d get yourself killed without me here.”

“I survived long before you, pup,” Tristan tells him with an edge of danger in his glare. This look is the closest he ever gets to baring his teeth. Galahad has long since been intimidated by him. 

“And I had a family before you. Can you say the same?” 

Tristan stands, in so little clothing that he shouldn’t look as aggressive as he does. He stalks toward Galahad and the younger knight isn’t quick enough to escape the sharp movement; he grabs him by his throat and shoves him hard against the wall. 

“Tristan, I meant — ” He sputters, coughs. “Put me down, you  _ beast _ .” 

Tristan does, eyes glinting red in the dim light. Galahad rubs at his throat, knowing that there will be a bruising mark come tomorrow, but he doesn’t swallow his words.

“What I meant to say is we’re the closest thing you have to family. Don’t you think you’ll be lost when we are no longer by your side?” 

“Arthur is here.”

“To hell with Arthur,” Galahad bites out. “He doesn’t care about us.” 

Tristan simmers down, glancing toward his dresser to inconspicuously avert his eyes. Galahad grows bold, taking one of his hands in his own and brings it to his heart. 

“I consider you my family, Tristan. I’ve been closer to no one else since I was snatched from my life. You’ve taught me how to be a man, a soldier. Even when I didn’t want to learn, you showed me the merit of winning a fight, of surviving independently. You could come with me.” 

“With you?” Tristan echoes, uncertain as he’s ever sounded. 

“Home. My home. It’s not spacious, so we wouldn’t have to stay. We could get some place else, close by. I can’t bear the thought of you throwing your life away for the Romans.” 

They’ve argued about this several times before. What will happen after the war ends, after their mission comes to a grinding halt. Galahad has become infuriated over Tristan’s nonchalance and Tristan agitated over the younger’s flaunting of family and home. 

“I am not meant for a home, pup,” Tristan tells him softly. “I was built for battle.” 

“War is everywhere, it will never end,” Galahad argues. “Don’t you believe you deserve to work toward something beyond death?” 

Tristan doesn’t respond, stroking a thumb over the back of Galahad’s hand. They remain in silence for several moments, which is enough time for consideration, Galahad rejoices in his mind, but he is swept away by strong hands in the next moment and dragged to Tristan’s bed. 

He goes willingly, having done this enough times it doesn’t startle him any longer. 

Tristan opens him up with gruff impatience and the slick oil he keeps in his bedside. Galahad encourages him with breathy moans and a softly voiced ‘ _ Yes _ ’ as he sinks inside his body, and groans as he’s fucked with far more passion than would be deemed acceptable for two touch-starved soldiers desperate to get off. 

Tristan surrounds his body entirely with his arms and hips, thrusting languid and if Galahad didn’t know better, loving. Galahad takes it, high-pitched noises growing in intensity, scratching and grappling at his shoulders as he’s fucked into the mattress.

He hasn’t told him Tristan is the only one who has ever touched him like this. 

Still, even after all the time between this and the first time. 

They come together, Galahad clamping full-bodied around him with a shaky cry, and Tristan latching his teeth into his neck, deflating as he spends inside of him.

After it all, they lie there in each other’s arms, naked as the day they were born. 

“Where were you born?” Galahad asks, when even the wind outside grows quiet. It is perhaps the first question he has ever asked him of his life before the war.

“My first memory of life is that of a bayou. Marshy land, sickly warm water. I do not remember a mother or a father. There were derelict forest dwellers who helped me learn how to speak.”

“How do you feel about dry farmlands and rain in the spring?”

Tristan chuckles, stroking through Galahad’s sweaty hair and responds, “I’ll think about it.” 

It is close enough to a confirmation for Galahad that he can’t help but to rest, finally at peace with his future. Tristan holds him all through the night, and when Galahad wakes up, he is covered by a thick blanket and Tristan is gone. Risen for the day, ready for the mission. 

All of them don’t make it. 

Lancelot’s death is a cruelly slow one. Everyone weeps at his grave during Arthur’s parting words. When Galahad sees Tristan’s body, pale from lack of blood, and cold to the touch, he weeps too. There are no words spoken when he bends over his body, defeated by the loss, tears soaking into his bloodstained tunic. His brothers force him to muffle the screams begging to escape, not quite able to allow it loose with dozens of eyes watching his every move. 

After their brothers in arms are buried, Galahad finds his enthusiasm to go home has dwindled. He does, anyway. His sisters and mother greet him with hugs and kisses, his father shakes his hand and congratulates him, tells him he is proud for surviving and for his strength. 

Galahad finds himself drifting in his room, for months. 

It doesn’t end, daydreaming about what it could have been like, bringing Tristan home, watching him integrate into a family life, perhaps helping Galahad build a quaint home for the two of them. By the lake, or on the bayou. 

He doesn’t miss battle, but he misses what reminds him of Tristan. 

There is nothing here of him, and when Galahad stirs from arousal at night, he flags nearly instantly at the memory of Tristan’s worshipping hands on his body, inside of him. 

He had loved him, before he’d considered him a friend.

He’s almost certain Tristan felt the same.

It is a year later, when he is able to go through a night without horrors waking him with an eruptive blood-curdling sound, impossibly pulled from his own throat. When he is able to wake without being reminded of what has been lost. There are times now, he doesn’t think of  _ him  _ every moment of every day. 

Then, when he lies down on his sheets at dusk one evening, a tapping at his window rouses him. He sits up and opens it, startled when a bird swoops in. 

Iseult. 

“I thought you were dead,” he whispers, running his fingers over the feathers of the mottled bird. It is fairly possible it is another bird entirely, but there is something akin to hope coiling anew in his chest, and he looks out at the sky to find it filled with warm colors and scarcely a cloud. 

The bird coos, nuzzling Galahad’s wrist.

He closes his eyes, thinks about the past, and smiles. 

They will find each other, in another life. 

**Author's Note:**

> half of this had been sitting in my drafts forever, and i wanted desperately to put it out into the world. i promised myself id do one king arthur fic and that's it, it was a small craving i had. hopefully this was enjoyable, i know it was a bit disjointed. much love xoxo


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